The Film

When Jackson is packing away his books, the camera focuses on one titled "Egypt Before the Pharaohs". The sculpture on cover looks rather similar to a goa'uld.

Given what we learn about the goa'uld and jaffa in the series, Ra having two First Primes styled after a jackal and a hawk seems all kinds of wrong... until you remember that Ra was the goa'uld emperor at the time, so he might have given himself two First Primes as a show of superiority, and then styled his own underlings like Anubis and Heru-ur (other rival goa'uld themselves) probably to mock them.

There were multiple Horus guards, in one scene Anubis (originally intended to be the Anubis) is flanked by two of them.

The massive, massive changes in personality between this movie's O'Neil (one L) and the series' O'Neill (two Ls) are neatly explained by how he was going through suicidal depression at the time of the movie (which is the reason he was chosen for the mission in the first place). By the end of the movie, if you're playing close attention, he seems to be starting to turn (back) into his (presumably natural) wise-cracking self, first with the "How ya doin'? *wink*" and then with the Pre-Mortem One-Liner he gives the First Prime.

Presumably, his wise-crackng is a coping mechanism developed when he was in the Special Forces.

Ra's guards weren't Jaffa. Their outfits expose their midrifts. Since they don't sound like goa'uld they must be sarcophagus-using elite humans.

The coordinate system Daniel explains in the film is unlikely to function. It's based on the idea of lines of position crossing to form a fix. On a 2D map, if you can draw a line that you're definitely on, say, between two mountain peaks, and you can draw another line between two towers that you happen to be between, you are where the lines cross. It also works on the surface of 3D objects, like Earth's surface. But when you can move freely in 3D space, that system breaks down. It works if you can pick four points that all lie on the same plane, but even if you carefully pick 38 naturally occurring points (the number of symbols on the gate minus the point of origin), it's unlikely you could navigate this way. And if you can't make a fix using two lines of position, a third won't help. A more reliable system would take 38 pulsars from around the galaxy and give them each a unique symbol. Each symbol also corresponds to a number. You could then address any point in space with a 6 symbol code like this: The first symbol names a pulsar. The second is the azimuth from that pulsar expressed as one of 38 directions around the compass on the plane of the galaxy's disc, with the galaxy's center as direction 1. The third is an azimuth on a plane perpendicular to the galaxy's plane on that first line, with the first line as direction 1. Do it again from a different pulsar for symbols 4, 5 and 6 and you have narrowed down the whole galaxy into a reasonably small area where logically only one gate could exist. The "point of origin" is a procedural sign that tells the gate to dial that address. It would work like a 3D VOR system. If there is a gate in the addressed area, a connection is made. If not, or if the address isn't a valid address (the lines don't cross) no connection is made. Even more likely is that it's just a discretely assigned address like a phone number.

The Series

General

In SG-1 and Atlantis, the prime method of destroying enemy ships is teleporting nukes right past their shield to blow them the hell out. You know, exactly like was done to the first Goa'uld ship in the entire 'Verse; Ra's, in the movie. After 15 years, still the most effective way. — Mr Death

Stargate SG-1

At the start of the ninth season of Stargate SG-1, I was expecting Mitchell to be nothing more than a flawless O'Neill clone to try and buy our affection. It got bad when Landry talked about how Mitchell apparently had no flaws as far as he could tell. But after getting to know Mitchell, it hit me. The writers were reassuring us that Mitchell would have flaws and like Landry, we would figure them out. The very fact that they were aware of the fear of Mitchell being flawless was a great comfort to me. —Green Dragon

It only just occurred to me that in the fan favorite, groundhog day-inspired episode "Window of Opportunity", every time time resets O'Neill finds himself in the cafeteria eating a bowl of froot loops. Froot LOOPS! ~~~ NoSoup4Me

And hey, I can have two Fridge Brilliance moments at once. In Continuum, Ba'al goes back in time and alters history so that he becomes lord over all the Goa'uld system lords. At first this just seemed to me to be an easy way to bring back some of the dead villains for a cameo in the film, especially Yu and Apophis, but then I realized which of the Goa'uld Ba'al uses as his default lieutenant. Cronos. Basically, Ba'al built himself a time machine and then used it to make the self-proclaimed god of time his bitch! ~~~ NoSoup4Me

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but to be accurate, Cronos (in mythology) was the former lord of the universe (the Titan equivalent of Zeus, essentially) before his sons Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon overthrew him - no relation (surprisingly, for ancient mythology) to Chronos/Chronus, the personification of time.

Given the proliferation of both spellings for an intended meaning of "time," this is more likely to be writers not knowing that there's a difference between "c" and "ch" as far as Ancient Greek is concerned.

Ancient Greek doesn't have a "C". It has a "K" (kappa) and a "Ch" (chi).

In Episode 6.19: "The Changeling", Teal'c drifts between obvious hallucinations and less obvious hallucinations. It took me a second time watching the episode to realize, that his hallucinations of Daniel Jackson were different, mostly because he appeared independent of the other characters. At that moment it was suddenly obvious, that this is strongly hinted to be the real ascended Daniel Jackson playing an apparition like he did to O'Neill in "Abyss" earlier that season.

While the Ancients were definitely Neglectful Precursors overall, the Anubis situation wasn't the horrible neglect it looks like at first glance. The seemingly intractable problem - a disembodied Goa'uld with all the scientific knowledge of the Ancients - was finally solved by Oma Desala moving directly to fight him, meaning that she would be bound fighting him forever. Sounds horrible, but remember, she helped him ascend in the first place. All the ancients were demanding was that she clean up her own mess. Sure, that's hard on all the mere mortals oppressed or killed by Anubis until then, but there is a certain symmetry to it that godlike beings generally like and there's no reason Oma couldn't have done it right away.

Though I wouldn't worry about Oma having to fight Anubis forever, mostly becuase no matter how much he's changed in some ways he'll always suffer from the one flaw that all the snakes have, a total lack of patience...

It always bothered this troper how wildly the Goa'uld power dynamics grew during the course of the series. At the end of the first season, everyone seems flabbergasted that Apophis has two motherships, and then a few years later apparently you're just not even cool unless you're running around with fleets of thirty. Then it hit me: the Goa'uld had been living for centuries under a single Supreme System Lord, who was probably limiting their fleet strength the same way he was preventing all-out feudalism from breaking out. Which makes, again, pretty much the entire series Jack and Daniel's fault.

Before Ra was killed, the Goa'uld had a feudal system of government, with one ruler with many rulers below that controlled their own domain. After killing Ra all the Goa'uld wanted to take his place, because they are Goa'uld and that's what they do. Apophis sent two ships because that's all he had left, he had few Jaffa left after that battle according to the next few episodes. In the two parter, "Moebius", at the end of season 8, Ra was not dead so Apophis had lots of ships to send and attack Earth. Because Earth was running around killing Goa'ulds left and right but not their fleets, the remaining Goa'uld were able to take their fleets and Jaffa. However, because gods cannot die, yet Jaffa just kept getting new bosses every time the last one died, they started figuring out that all that talk about false gods was right.

Stargate Atlantis

Minor bit of Fridge Brilliance in the spin off Stargate Atlantis. In "Grace Under Pressure," McKay is hallucinating Samantha Carter as someone to talk to. At one point, she appears to him wearing only a skimpy bathing suit, and he thinks she's distracting him from finding a way to save himself, and calls her "Lt. Colonel Siren!" At first I thought he was just using Siren as a generic term for a beautiful, seductive woman, before I realized he was actually alluding to the original mythological Sirens who, As You Know, lured sailors to their deaths with their beautiful songs.

Even more minor bit of Fridge Brilliance mixed with Meaningful Name. The name Meredith means 'sea lord.' Which character on Stargate Atlantis is most associated with the sea? Rodney! He gets trapped underwater, names the whale that rescues him, and seems generally fond of sea life. Coincidence?

While probably an example that could be relevant to other parts of the Stargate-verse too, the conclusion of the penultimate episode is particularly terrifying in its suggestions. Alt!Mckay states that the signal has travelled into all(?) alternate realities. So yes, the final episode ends on a high note with the super-hive being destroyed and Atlantis surviving. What about the countless other realities where the signal was picked up, and no one could stop the Wraith from slaughtering the population of Earth? In this instance, it may be best to follow Alt!Woolsey's advice and only be concerned about the safety and security of our own universe.

Stargate Universe

On Stargate Universe, Rush keeps referring to the ship as his "destiny". He means he's supposed to be there, but the ship is also named the Destiny. So he's really saying it's his ship. — Jonn

Even better: Rush is the first person to name the Destiny in-universe. It's assumed he read the name off a computer terminal, but this was never shown. He could have simply chosen the name himself, and nobody would've been able to contradict him.

When Amanda Perry accidentally traps Dr. Nicholas Rush's consciousness inside Destiny she tells him that the program didn't work because Rush did not truly love her. This seems contradictory towards Rush's actions and his own statements, but then I realized some very off-putting things about their relationship: mainly, in all the time he has known her, he probably never once touched her. Since she was a quadriplegic Rush never had the opportunity to shake her hand or share any sort of those innocuous, casual touches that occurs between colleagues (and Rush is not the sort to put a supportive hand on the shoulder or instigate anything like that anyway). Every time that Rush has touched her she has either been A) in another person's body or B) a virtual computer program. It seems that even her, arguably one of the very few people to have ever really gotten to know him, was kept at a distance.

The ninth chevron wasn't built specifically with Destiny in mind, but to allow for dialing stargates onboard ships. Rather than carrying a regular stargate on a ship and orbiting a planet to establish a wormhole — and having to know in advance where and when the ship will be to avoid dialing the local planet instead — you dial a specific gate stored onboard a specific ship no matter where it is or its proximity to another stargate. The Ancients probably had other ships with stargates onboard, but they were all destroyed or lost except for Destiny. Think how useful a shipboard stargate would be in a war: You can resupply a ship in deep space rather than at a planet, deploy a military base's worth of fighters and missiles out of a small ship, or use it like the Asuran gate weapon. The massive power requirements for dialing Destiny are only because it's so far away, which means you can send anything that fits through a stargate anywhere in the galaxy.

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